A ringing started in my ears and my entire body was numbed by the impossible, biting pains all over me. Within seconds I was a blank, lifeless body, gazing up at where it had fallen like a dead bird. I became delusional, the arms and bodies and uniforms surrounding me smudging and smearing like charcoal, even as they pulled me onto a stretcher.
There was a horrendous scream as something large, black and smoking plummeted out of the attic trap door, but I was already being carried down the stairs away from it all before I could see what it was. I nodded in and out of consciousness as the attic got further away from me.
Even then, when the smoke parted for an instant and the orange flames were dancing, I saw Peter up there, silhouetted, watching me go.
It took me almost a week of consciousness to realise I wasn’t in Mevagissey anymore, like Dorothy waking in Kansas. I was back in London at King’s Cross Hospital, stuck in a side room with halogen lights and the incessant bleeping of machines, the squeaking of shoes and trolley wheels from the hallway.
I’d been adjusting to my surroundings, barely speaking, without ever registering where I was at all. I’d allowed nurses to take me to and from the bathroom, dress and re–dress my burns with thick white bandage and sticky pads and even help me into the tub for a wash using a special hoist.
I went limply from one room to another, all white and clean and all the same. But even though my body had been cleaned and my wounds treated, my mind was still left in the fog of that fire, muted and lost amongst the flames.
At night I woke frequently, gasping, crying, stifling myself with the pillow. Once, a domestic was even frightened from my room as she crept by me with her mop and bucket, when I awoke from a nightmare screaming.
Melanie came. She said the police were going to need to hear my side of the story. She said they’d found human remains after the blaze, but they needed help identifying them to build a case.
I told her immediately that they belonged to David Pierce. Afraid, her hands shaking, she took my hand in hers and said, ‘Who did it?’
I blinked. For the first time my head cleared, and it all seemed so simple again; as simple as it had seemed before the fire. I decided I’d tell her exactly what I’d promised my father I would say. ‘My dad did it,’ I lied. ‘I couldn’t stop him. He killed David and then he tried to kill me; all of us. He wanted us burned alive.’
The terror on her face was something that she, even in her profession, couldn’t disguise. She squeezed my fingers, making the tube in my hand sting as the skin grew taught and tweaked it. While she figured out what to say next, I reassured myself that this was natural; an eye for an eye, all that. I was taking back my life now. I was being strong. I was going to win this.
‘He’s in a bad, bad way Ellen,’ said Melanie, swallowing hard. ‘It’s touch and go. The police want to get all the facts straight on your end before they can even think about setting a date for the trial. They have to build a case, and they can’t without your father’s—’
She waffled on. Sometime later sounds returned to her flapping mouth again, but I didn’t listen to them. I simply asked: ‘Is he suffering?’
Her eyes glistened wetly, her wild hair stuffed behind her ears. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They have him on morphine.’
‘But he’s alive,’ I said.
She nodded slowly. ‘It doesn’t look good. He’s badly burned...The scarring is...Well, I don’t want to frighten you. He’s made it this far, that’s what counts.’
I sat up in bed, letting my gown flap open at the back. ‘Do you think I care about that?’ I said. ‘About a man who molested me, treated me like his possession, and then tried to burn me to death? Do you think I want to know about his welfare while I’m sitting here with nothing, lucky to be alive?’
Her eyes darkened. ‘Molested,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘What are you talking about?’
I gripped the bed sheets. I paused when the catering assistant popped around the door with a fresh jug of water, which Melanie took and poured for me, passing me the frosty plastic cup. I took it and drank, letting the liquid refresh my throat.
‘You’re telling me your father molested you?’ said Melanie, watching me swallow each mouthful methodically. ‘You’ve never said anything. You never said anything at all. Dennis—’
‘Dad made me blame him,’ I blurted, the second lie of the evening falling from my mouth before I could shut my lips. I couldn’t process what had come over me at all. It was a sudden moment of clarity, like an urge to set things straight.
Loyalty, perhaps, to Peter’s innocent father, who had suffered because I was too young and stupid to understand what I was doing? It was no use lying now — for the most part, anyway.
The thought of my father getting away with it now, after what he’d done, was a pain worse than death. I’d had enough of it. Of course, I was still a liar — and still a murderer. But I was a good liar, and I was in control.
I could make things better now.
I closed my eyes and imagined a life without my father, or the looming ghost of my absent mother who knew nothing of this. I imagined the life of a relieved victim like the women on This Morning; the press, the autobiography, the columns in the magazines...
But best of all, I imagined a life where I was a human, and not a doll to be used and posed and tucked up in bed. A life when at night I could dream of Peter sailing away from me, over the cool horizon of the night’s sky, instead of us drowning together in those silent, eternal depths.
Melanie’s voice made my eyes snap open. ‘So you’re saying that Dennis was not your abuser, but you lied and watched him get convicted and sent away for three years. That’s what you’re telling me now?’
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m telling you that Peter found out and, rather than break up all the family I had left, I was forced to blame somebody else. All my...bastard life I’ve been riddled with guilt about one thing or another, and for god’s sake, I just wanted it to stop.’
Melanie massaged her temple, breathing hard. ‘OK. All right. So supposing I believe what you’re telling me — that this man was innocent all along and you were protecting your own abuser, your own father. You’re also telling me that when David Peirce came to your house — we have Lauren to vouch for that — your father killed him, put him in the attic, and set the house on fire to hide the evidence.’
‘Out of jealousy,’ I said. ‘Because of what David tried to do to me.’
I could see in her eyes that she couldn’t decide which parts were truth and which were bullshit. But I worked out pretty quickly that Lauren had already given her statement, and it was working in my favour. It made sense. I’d shown her the bruises, hadn’t I?
And hadn’t I asked for help?
That was enough, I was sure of it. I could set things right like this. I was the cripple girl, the victim.
Even if I was completely honest with myself about it all: the fact that I’d stabbed David with that knife, and enjoyed defeating him; the fact it was my choice to blame Dennis and save my dad; the fact that I’d killed the only boy I’d ever loved; I was still a victim.
I knew if I kept believing that, it would take me far. I just knew it would. It had worked before, in the last trial, and it could work again.
‘Lauren says that David had treated her badly in the relationship, and that you—’ here she pointed at me with her pen. ‘—had told her on the night of the fire that he’d tried to rape you. Is that true?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And when my dad walked in on us, he attacked him.’
‘Just tell me something,’ said Melanie, after a long pause. ‘Why, if you’d been living with abuse from your own parent for years, would you protect him all this time? Why didn’t you crack under the pressure during Dennis’ trial?’
My stomach tied in a knot. It was a true enough point she was making. I’d always been good at playing games, making up lies, masking the truth and twisting it to my advantage — I’d learned to b
e that way growing up.
I shrugged. ‘Because everything just went so wrong. Everything in my life has been wrong since the beginning because of my dad, ever since I was ten years old. If you’re asking me to make you understand why, I can’t, because I don’t know. Dad always did everything for me, and when he made me tell tales, I didn’t argue.’
‘Why?’ she said, her voice hard and disbelieving.
‘Because he was all I had,’ I said. ‘And I was only fifteen. What the hell did I know? What could I ever know? He did everything for me. He taught me. You try on my shoes, Melanie; just try them on for a second. My mum dumped us, and all we had was each other; we were each other’s ugly secret. And when we came to Cornwall I had my problems, but they were just...washed away, you know? I finally found something that was all mine—’
‘You mean when you were with Peter?’
‘Yes, Peter! He was all mine to keep and I wasn’t allowed to have him. I lost him and then I had nothing left, do you understand? It’s like I didn’t even lose him, I just...I just threw him away! I wasted him, and Dennis too. I was being...puppeted, for Christ’s sakes!
‘And I needed my dad to do things for me, to help me get by...I hated it, I swear I hated him, but I didn’t have any choice. We had our own rules, and I couldn’t share them with anyone. When Peter found out, when I told him, it was a horrible mistake. It was like two worlds mixing, you know? I’d done something horribly wrong. I’d broken our trust and I just wanted to reverse it, to take it all back. Only it got worse.’
I was crying now, wiping my nose on my nightdress. Melanie nodded. ‘The accident was tragic and it should never have happened. How did it affect the trial?’
‘What Peter didn’t know couldn’t hurt him — he was dead, and couldn’t ever find out. Once Dennis was put away, me and dad could carry on, escape it, pretend it never happened. Only—’ I struggled, blinking back tears. I couldn’t find the words.
‘Only?’ Melanie said.
‘It never went away. When we came back it was like Pete was with me, in my head, suffocating me. He wouldn’t leave me alone.’
‘You felt guilty.’
‘Yes! But he knows, I swear he does, from beyond the grave. Melanie, have you ever seen a ghost? Have you ever had one of those experiences?’ I was bolt upright in bed now, madly gesticulating into thin air.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts.’
‘Well I do,’ I said, wiping my nose. ‘I’ve seen them. I’ve seen him. He was with me always in that house, watching me, making it torture. You tell me how you’d deal with that, Melanie, go on. You tell me.’
‘You want to know what I think it means?’ she said, frowning deeply. ‘I think you are a deeply troubled girl, Ellen. I think you’ve been keeping secrets far too long. You aren’t well.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But you don’t understand. He was with me in that house. He’s there in the harbour. He’s up on our hill. He’s stuck there, like I am, and it’s like...Like no matter where I go, we’ll both be there, just stuck, you know? He might have died but neither of us made it out alive.’
Here her frown deepened, and she didn’t meet my eyes. I could see she was choosing her words carefully. ‘The police have had a report suggesting that Peter’s grave was very seriously tampered with. They say that somebody had come and dug the whole thing up, then replaced all the earth. They couldn’t see anything missing from the...grave....but—’ her eyes flicked up at me, cold and serious. ‘I wondered what you might know about that.’
My muscles tensed. Now I was the one avoiding her gaze. ‘He did it,’ I said, shaking. ‘Please don’t tell. I didn’t want to, I swear.’
Melanie watched my face for a long time, then nodded slowly. ‘I believe you,’ she said.
I sobbed with relief, shaking all over. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘We,’ Melanie began, taking my hand again in hers. She gave my fingers a squeeze. ‘We are going to start being honest with each other about the past, the present, everything.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘And then we are going to work out how we’re going to help you with your future. I understand the pressure you’ve been under, really I do. It’ll take some very serious explaining, but we can do it. We’re going to get your life back.’
‘What if I never had a life of my own to start with?’ I said. ‘Because that’s how it feels. I’ve lived through everyone else. I’ve lived through dad and Pete.’
It was true, even if I was acknowledging it for the first time. I was just something that got played with so much it became tarnished, like a rag doll torn in too many places. Only when somebody else picked me up did I have another chance at living.
Melanie nodded. ‘I know. But you know what, if we can’t salvage the life you had, then we’ll just have to build one right from the bottom, like building a house. We’ll make one you feel safe in, that much I promise you.’
‘But I mean it, Ellen. No more lying. I want the truth and the bare facts, and that’s what we’ll give to the police. That’s what I’m here for, and all I need is for you to cooperate. Can you do that?’ she said. ‘Can you be completely honest with me?’
‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘I can.’
As honest as I want to be.
Chapter Twenty–Five
There never was a trial. On September 23rd, my father, a featureless, blistered body tied up to a machine, died in his sleep. I’d never once visited him.
The nurse told me that, before his heart started failing, he’d been groaning something while he dreamed. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought it’d be some comfort for me to know that it sounded a lot like he was saying Ellen.
Dennis was publicly relieved of his previous title, child molester, in all the UK and international papers. He was awarded a six–figure sum in compensation, the papers reported.
When they asked him what he was going to do with the money, he allegedly said, ‘I’m going somewhere warm and far away from here.’
For that much, I was grateful. Dennis was one of the good ones, no matter what he’d done in the past.
At least some broken things could be mended.
Chapter Twenty–Six
A year on, I was living on Camberwell Street at a therapeutic centre, where I’d been staying since leaving hospital. By then I’d gotten to know the residents pretty well in passing, if you could call it that. I was more like a dummy, repositioning myself, making all the right movements, before packing myself away at night.
I kept to myself but, seeing as it was my eighteenth birthday, I thought I’d make more effort to join in. It was the first birthday without my father, and for once I didn’t have to think about flimsy black nightdresses. I didn’t have to think about anything, full stop.
There were four of us living there, with our own rooms, and we even had a live—in therapist called Julie, who supported all of us in group sessions. We were all trouble–people who needed help getting “back on our feet”. I’d achieved that in the literal sense but, in my mind, I was always in Mevagissey, atop that grassy cliff.
I’d kept in touch with Melanie, seeing as she passed my notes on, but she couldn’t make it to my birthday. I wasn’t upset. She probably just didn’t think it was appropriate and, to be honest, neither did I.
We had the morning group session first, as usual. We sat in a small circle and each of us shared how we were feeling that day, and how we thought we were progressing. I updated them all about the agonising physiotherapy work I’d been doing at the hospital, and assured them that my leg was much better. The burns on my calf and left arm still ached, but I was at least out of the pressure casts.
I didn’t talk much about my mental health, and I didn’t have to all the time. Things were that simple here.
With a nod from Julie, Daniel spoke next. He was twenty–eight and had tried to commit suicide six times before he was sectioned, and he was convinced it was because of some antibiotics he’d
been on. We weren’t supposed to judge; we just had to listen, even if it sounded crazy.
‘I’m not saying everybody gets the same reaction, but they just screwed with my mind, I swear,’ he’d always say. Sometimes, though, when he was having a bad day, he’d tell us how things had never been right since he’d found out he was adopted, and that his parents weren’t biologically his.
Today he was wearing a plain, army–green T–shirt and a pair of jeans. He’d shaved. It appeared to be a good day for him. ‘I’m doing OK,’ he said, giving a shrug, even a little smile. ‘That’s all I’ve got to say. I feel fine.’
Julie smiled and nodded. ‘Good. Lilly, would you like to go next? Go on, give us an update.’
Lilly was thirty-two and had never been in a relationship. When her mother died of thyroid cancer she had a mental breakdown and walked into traffic wearing nothing but her mum’s bathrobe. Today she was wearing fresh tights and a purple scarf around her neck. Good day.
‘I had a dream about mum last night, which upset me a little bit. We were visiting Great Yarmouth on one of those coach trips, when...’
We listened, watched her cry. Then she said, ‘But when I woke up, I didn’t start panicking. I just accepted that it was a dream and now this is reality.’
‘So our techniques have been working then, would you say?’ said Julie. Lilly nodded, dabbing her cheeks with a tissue. ‘Great. Let’s have Michael then, last but not least. How are we doing today?’
Michael was sixteen and had been in and out of foster care all his life. The police referred him to a psycho-analyst after he tried to set his school on fire, and he determined that Michael needed treatment for a mood disorder. He came here seven months later.
He leaned back in his chair, tracksuit sagging around his thin body, his beanie hat revealing a tiny floss of white-blonde hair. Bad day. ‘Nothing to say.’
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